Authorpreneur Dashboard – Helen Pryke
Walls of Silence
Literature & Fiction
Living in the mountains of Sicily, Maria has the perfect childhood until the fateful day of her First Communion, when her life changes forever. The events that follow will take her away from her home town to the streets of Milan. Will she ever be able to trust anyone ever again? Set in turbulent 1960s Italy, Walls of Silence is the story of a girl who must find the courage and strength to survive her family’s betrayal and the prejudices of her country.
Book Bubbles from Walls of Silence
Maria's fight for justice
This is Pietro's voice, talking about the work Maria carried out for abused women. I don't have the resources or the know-how to open a women's centre or petition the government, but I would like to help people from all walks of life understand the effects that abuse has on women. I hope that my book shows how devastating it can be, and how difficult it is for a woman to rebuild her life after abuse. I have also decided to make a donation from every copy sold to a women's centre in the UK, and to highlight the work these centres do, and how important it is for them to continue to receive funding so that they can help every woman who goes to them.
Pietro
Maria meets Pietro at a point in her life when she has given up all hope of ever changing her situation. Sensing that she is unable to trust anyone, he has to reach out to her with his heart and, against her will, she falls in love with him. Pietro is a symbol of the hope I had that my life would somehow change for the better, against all odds. Through Pietro, I created the man I needed to be able to start living again - someone who would understand, listen, and love me anyway. Maria takes a chance on Pietro and it turns out to be the best thing she could have done. Just as I did when I met my Pietro in real life.
Apartment in Milan
Shunned by her family, Maria is forced to marry Vinny and move from her home town in Sicily to Milan. The apartment described in this excerpt is the apartment I lived in for one and a half years when I first moved to Italy. Coming from a large house with a garden on the outskirts of a UK town, it was quite a shock to find myself in this tiny box close to the city centre. I remember feeling homesick for a long time and a deep sense of isolation, even though I was in the middle of a busy city. I also wanted to show how badly southern Italians were treated by the northerners during the 50s and 60s, a period of great immigration due to lack of work in the south. Maria and Vinny's marriage suffers because of this.
Maria's mother
The relationship between Maria and her family is based on my own relationship with my mother, and the jealousy I felt towards my siblings. I wanted to create a near-perfect childhood for Maria so that the reader could understand how traumatic later events were for her. Maria's mother is an important figure in her early childhood, and this gives her a strong foundation which helps her overcome everything that happens to her during adolescence.
